Happy New Year: welcome to 1984!

‘1984’ was arguably one of the most controversial novels of the 20^th Century, and I have a clear recollection of the chilling BBC TV production starring Peter Cushing nearly 60 years ago.

 

We regarded it as dystopian fiction; it could never really happen.

 

But it could and it has. Let’s get started.

 

Perpetual war.

The background is perpetual war between Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia.

 

Well, you might say, that has never happened.

 

But it has, except that it is a perpetual economic war between the Anglosphere, the EU, and the BRICS. The most hopeful outcome, which I share, is that there will be no losers.

 

Big Brother.

He is certainly watching you, and me and everyone in the UK. We are told that there are more surveillance cameras per capita in the UK than any nation on earth; this includes the most repressive regimes. Kitten Heels May has recently been knocked back in her efforts to legislate for the authorities to be able to monitor every single electronic message that we send – e-mails, phone calls, social media, the full Monty. She lost this time round, but she will be back. And, of course, we have Leveson pontificating about legal sanctions on blogs, tweets and any other form of electronic publication.

 

Thought crime.

We have Blair to thank for introducing this in his public order legislation, whereby you can be convicted of a hate crime simply because the person on the receiving end thinks that it was such. There is much more within the 3,600 new laws introduced during the Blair regime (amongst them, it is now an imprisonable offence to allow an unlicensed concert to take place in a church hall. You can go to prison if your child fails to attend school, or if you smoke in a public place, or if you fail to obtain a passport for your pet donkey or if you are a child caught in possession of a firework at any time other than on or around November 5 or New Year's Day).

Newspeak.

We have this in spades; it’s called political correctness. We can now be convicted for what we say, as well as for what we do. Mere vulgar abuse, a British characteristic, is a crime, as is asking a cop if his horse is gay. In addition you can be arrested for taking photographs, like the man who was nicked for snapping a police car driving the wrong way down a one-way street.

 

The cult of personality.

Contemporary politics is driven by it, not by policies or principles. The whole of the media and the entertainment industry is besotted with it. We have people pulling down enormous money for being ‘personalities, ‘celebrities’ and nothing more.

 

Double-think.

This is holding two mutually contradictory beliefs at the same time. It is an essential qualification for politicians, for the BBC and for much of the media.

 

Orwellian.

This has entered our language and means official deception, secret surveillance and manipulation of the past. Need I say more?

 

Is there any good news? Up to a point; the recent UN conference on communications broke up without agreement after the Russians, Chinese, and several Middle East states attempted to get resolutions enabling government to control and censor internet and social media content, and were smartly told to get lost.

 

But they’ll be back.

 

Happy New Year!

 

 

A Golden Age: things were never better!

I am indebted to the Editor of the Speccie for his piece putting our current woes into context.

 

Here is what he says.

 

‘It may not feel like it, but 2012 has been the greatest year in the history of the world. That sounds like an extravagant claim, but it is borne out by evidence. Never has there been less hunger, less disease or more prosperity. The West remains in the economic doldrums, but most developing countries are charging ahead, and people are being lifted out of poverty at the fastest rate ever recorded. The death toll inflicted by war and natural disasters is also mercifully low. We are living in a golden age’.

 

So let’s have a look at this.

 

First up, health.

 

We forget that until penicillin came along TB was endemic and for much of the previous times it was epidemic.

 

In the late 40’s my brother was stricken with TB-meningitis, which had previously been almost always fatal. He was one of the first patients to be treated with streptomycin.  He was in hospital for two years but emerged completely clear. For many years now it has been almost an extinct disease (although there are alarming signs of a resurgence from the third world of an antibiotics resistant variety).

 

I was smitten with polio in 1960, fortunately with no permanent paralysis. It is now unknown in the developed world. Smallpox is extinct, when once it was a major scourge. The old child killers, whooping cough, measles and chicken pox have been virtually eradicated.

 

The incidence of AIDS has been falling for the last 8 years, as has an even bigger scourge, malaria

 

At the turn of the 19^th C life expectancy was 48. It is now approaching 81.

 

The biggest killer in the last century has been war. The total dead in WW1and 2 must amount to hundreds of millions. We of our age lived through WW2, 40 years of the constant danger of being incinerated by nuclear warfare. We used to debate whether it was a good thing to have children in that atmosphere. But there have been fewer war deaths in the last decade than at any time in the last century.

 

Poverty? The Millennium Goals were reached in 2008, 7 years ahead of schedule (there was no official announcement of this; it would not have suited Dave’s aid agenda). Many millions of people have been lifted out of poverty in the past 20 years. But not by foreign aid programmes which have little to show for the trillions spent in the last 40 years. It was globalization.

 

The environment? The Greens will tell you that we cannot go on as we are without ruining the planet. But a 6% growth in rich world economies has also seen a 4% decrease in the consumption of fossil fuels, not because of wind farms and other expensive frauds but because of the development of more –fuel-efficient vehicles.

 

Energy? Again we are constantly told that we are going to run out of oil, gas etc. sometime soon. New ways of recovering fossil fuels, such as fracking, means that we are entering an age of energy abundance accompanied by falling prices (the Americans already pay only on-third of what we pay for gas).

 

So have a cheerful New Year in the certain knowledge that things have never been better.

 

 

 

US: over the cliff?

The USA is playing brinkmanship as we edge closer to the monster fiscal cliff. We are so near the precipice that our leaders are beginning to say that falling off would not be the worst thing in the world. We could even survive the fall. It sounds to me like we are being prepared for slaughter.

 

The media informs us that our government is creating over 100 jobs a day. We are up sizing an already overstuffed bureaucracy. I am constantly reminded of the third-world practice of using their civil services as an employment agency with vast numbers of new recruits brought in after every election or change of government.

 

We cannot afford all this up sizing and uncontrolled spending but nobody within the administration seems to care. Also, the prospect advanced by some economists that we can spend our way out of our economic doldrums is blatantly wrong. We have gone too far in the red ink to legislate anything short of massive spending cuts. The problem is, such legislation will not see the light of day owing to the numeric strength of a misguided opposition.

 

The deadline for legislating any compromise before Fiscal Cliff day has passed. Some limited legislative measures may still make it, such as the proposal to shield our middle class from the effects of the looming curtailment of the Bush tax cuts. They, more than anything else, are the bone of contention between the liberals and conservatives.

 

So here we sit wondering whether Christmas dinner will be turkey or leftovers.

 

We intend to beat the system and serve pad Thai.

Retirement is for wimps!

Our present situation makes me reflect on retirement.

 

We were fortunate to find this winter retreat, but we began coming here well before I ‘retired’ which I have not actually done. The fact that I am a freelance means that I can choose when to work and when not. I have never retired in the real sense, but I have to recognise that I am a victim of ageism. Some teen-age key-basher runs my CV though the company profiler and says ‘ That ancient git; must be joking!’  So the approaches from clients diminish and tend to be for countries in which few people wish to work.

 

The latest was Lahore, but too dangerous and the project was three years.

 

The hoo-hah over raising the retirement age escapes me.

 

Being put out to grass at 65, in possession of your intellectual faculties and with a lifetime of experience, strikes me as cruel and unusual punishment.

 

Work is part of your normal functioning.

 

It gives a purpose in life. It (hopefully) gives you interest. It’s where you find daily companionship and where you make most of your friends. It’s why you bother to get up in the morning.

 

And of course it’s where the money comes from.

 

Unless you have another interest and a minimum income of £65,000 a year, you can say au revoir to most of the above.

 

A friend of mine sold his accountancy business for a considerable sum, sufficient to give him a comfortable situation. I asked him what he would do next, expecting him to say that he was simply making a career change. ‘Play golf every day’ was his reply.

 

And that’s another trap.

 

Playing golf or indulging in any other pastime is only pleasurable if it is a change from your normal activities. When they become your raison d’etre, the attraction rapidly palls. That is why holidays are only pleasurable by way of a change. After a time, relaxation morphs into boredom.

 

Another is that you and your spouse get under each other’s feet and often right up each other’s noses buy the unfamiliar circumstance of being in each other’s company all day. It is no surprise that the incidence of divorce amongst retirees is rising rapidly.

 

I know a number of people – not very well because they rarely make an appearance - who are highly qualified professionals. They sit at home doing the cross-word and waiting for God

 

So what to do? Well, something. Become a lollypop person. Get a job with B&Q which has the sensible policy of recruiting over-fifties because they are hard- working, punctual, courteous with customers and know a thing or two, qualities that are not invariably present in the younger generation. Join VSO and see the world and help to make it better. Stand for the local Council. Anything other than sitting at home watching Noel Edmunds.

 

I had the pleasure in Malawi of meeting an American orthopaedic surgeon, who must have been getting on because he was an original MASH doctor during the Korean War.

Every year he spent 3 months in the country operating pro bono on local patients who would otherwise gone untreated. (It was well-met indeed, because my wife had recently broken her arm and it had been badly set, causing much pain. He fixed free of charge). He later stood for Congress when well into his 70’s.

 

Interestingly, it’s the US and the UK that have the highest number of people still employed after retirement. (I read a story about the take-over of Wal-Mart of a furniture company owned by an elderly lady. It was a condition that she remain on the board. She attended the office daily. She was 101 years old).

 

The French  can’t wait to pack it in and spend their days playing petanque and drinking pastis.

 

 

The EU & the Nobel Peace Prize

The penny just dropped. The Committee in Oslo only awards the prize to those who have unselfishly advanced the cause of worldwide socialism. Recipients have much more in common with socialism than with promoting peace.

 

Are the Norwegians and Swedes without historical memory? Europe is at one another's throats on a daily basis and scenarios for regional skirmishes abound. The entire Committee should read aloud Janet Daley's latest articles on the future of socialism; it is not affordable.

 

Even the mighty USA cannot afford the commitments to social welfare that spring out of Obama's head like snakes from the Hydra. As long as do-gooders continue to support the indigent, the latter will expand in both numbers and needs.

 

We are having another cliffhanger as the deadline for settling the fiscal cliff problem nears. Given all the machinations the solution needs to go through after the contending parties come to terms, the deadline is next week. Otherwise, there is no time to execute the writing and legislating of the law.

 

Also, O has booked a 20 holiday in Hawaii and our beloved Senators and Representatives need a holiday break as well.

Dave, Nigel & the UKIP two-step!

When I read a major feature article about Nigel Farrage in the NYT of all places, syndicated to the Bangkok post, I know that he and UKIP have arrived with a vengeance.

 

I suspect that the main-line media have under-reported him, wishing that he would simply go away.

 

It’s not that he never says anything newsworthy. On the contrary, he knows how to put a bit of stick about.

 

He once told Van Rumpey, the colourless President of the EC, ‘ I said you would be the quiet assassin of nation-state democracy, and in your dull and technocratic way you have gone about your course’.

 

And that he had the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a bank clerk, for which sin, as I recall, he received a large fine.

 

His is a ‘damn the technocrats’ theme, which is pretty convincing in these days when Greece, Portugal and Ireland are dancing to the tune of officials from the IMF and the ECB, when Italy has a former EU Commissioner as its unelected Prime Minister, and when largely ineffectual politicians in France, Spain and the UK are completely failing to connect with their angry and austerity-weary voters.

 

He warns that the dissonance between  EU bosses and the people can result in ‘desperate people doing desperate things’ citing the rise of neo-Fascist parties in many parts of Europe.

 

There is no doubting that UKIP is becoming a rising force in British and European politics.

 

It came second in the last EU elections and may well come top next time around. Its share of the vote now, according to the latest polls, has risen from 3% at the last General Election to 13%, putting them in third place, ahead of the Lib-Dems. It humiliated both Tories and Lib-Dems in the Corby by-election.

 

It has the unique advantage of stating clearly what it stands for, unlike all the other parties whose principles remain a mystery.

 

I don’t agree with their ‘total withdrawal’ policy, but I would certainly support a  reversion to the Single Market, and scrub everything thereafter.

 

I wholeheartedly support their ‘flat tax’ proposal that overnight would get rid of thousands of HMRC drones plus the armies of lawyers and accountants whose sole purpose in life is tax avoidance for the wealthy, and greatly reduce the budget deficit accordingly.

 

And how could any reasonable person object to their entirely sensible immigration policy of refusing permanent residence to any immigrant until he has worked here for 5 years (and paid taxes), and of granting work permits on a quota system for those who would benefit the economy, easily compiled from job vacancy statistics, instead of the present crazy system of cracking down on student visas and damaging the finances of our Universities? Or of restricting immigrants on the basis of salary rather than the economic needs of the country?

 

It keeps hammering away at the cost and waste of the whole rotten edifice of the EU.  The leading economist, Tim Congdon, is a party member. Last year the UK paid $16 billion to the EU, but he calculates that when the cost of regulation, waste and misallocation of resources are taken into account, the true annual cost is $238 billion, 10% of our GDP.

 

Then there is the ludicrous European Parliament. Its massive HQ in Frankfurt is used only two days a month, and yet $250 million a year is spent carting 754 members plus several thousand support staff and lobbyists to the city every month.

 

So where does all this leave Dave?

 

As a one-term wonder unless he comes to an accommodation with Nigel.

 

Most of the UKIP support will come from disillusioned Tories. If Dave doesn’t do a deal we can look forward to years of Labour, because UKIP will be a ‘spoiler’ in  Tory marginals.

 

As for Nigel, he talks a good fight but is he a tactician?

 

First up, he must not spread his resources too thinly by contesting unwinnable seats. He should target marginals, especially those held by Lib-Dems with Labour second, but I am uncertain about the arithmetic when it comes to Labour marginals where the Lib-Dems came second. But we can predict on the poll figures that the Lib-Dems will probably revert to their historical strength of around five MPs.

 

There is one reasonable certainty in all this. The tectonic plates of politics are not merely shifting.

 

They are coming apart.

 

 

Religion & violence against women..

‘Guff’ is how two people whose opinion I value described my assertion that religion is merely a cloak to justify violence against women, when in reality it is sadistic assault for sexual indulgence.
 

So let’s get started.
 

We can dismiss so-called ‘honour’ killings (has there ever been such a prostitution of language?).
 

These foul murders, often in the most brutal circumstances, have been ascribed to Islam. The skewed logic is that all such murders are committed by Muslims, QED they stem from Islam.
 

Actually, they almost all stem from Pakistan, which happens to be Islamic. And they are not committed by the authority of Sharia but by semi-detached members of the human race, barbarians whom we have allowed to bring their vile and primitive customs from some tribal backwater in Pakistan to pollute society in the UK, whereas they should be confined to their own designated areas of origin, very much like animals in a game reserve.

So my starting point is that the Abrahamic religions have been conceived by men; if you believe that  they came down from the stratosphere in tablets of stone, you are definitely a suitable case for treatment. All assume the inferiority of women. In the same way that slavery is founded on a belief in the inferiority of the slave (whom the Bible places on the same footing as women).

“Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”

All three Abrahamic religions subscribe to the concept of female inferiority. They share the ‘Adam and Eve’ belief that it was a woman who let loose evil upon the world..

They share the belief that menstruating women are unclean and to be avoided. Some Orthodox Jews will never shake hands with a woman in case she is menstruating, and I guess this is the reason why it bad protocol to shake hands with a Muslim woman.

I
n Christian societies, until recent times women were regarded as property and had no rights. It was only in Victorian times that emancipating laws were passed, such as the Married Women’s Property Act, prior to which all the wife’s property passed to the husband, leaving the wife in danger of future penury if the marriage went bad.

It was perfectly lawful to beat your wife with a stick, provided it was no more than a finger’s thickness. You can see where my thesis is now going.

I
t is only in very recent years that women’s rights have gained the protection of the law.

But we are not there yet.

What are the main issues of concern to the Anglican Church. Poverty? Sin? Inequality? Not that I can see.

The C of E is sex-obsessed over women bishops and gay priests.

The Catholic Church does not even believe that women are responsible for their own bodies. Their Christian duty is to be a brood-mare. Abortion is not permitted even if the woman’s life is in danger, as in the recent Irish case where the woman was neither Catholic nor Christian nor Irish – a clear case of manslaughter if ever I heard of one.

In a case of rape, a woman is obliged to carry the child of her rapist.

In other words, a woman has no intrinsic value other than to breed. Only a short step from there to violence against her.

And so to Judaism.

I
n Orthodox synagogues men pray separately from women and in many women are relegated to an upstairs gallery. Gender hierarchies  are entrenched in Jewish thought; orthodox Jewish men are required to say everyday thanks to a God "who has not made me a woman".

There are the ‘chained’ women; their husbands can refuse them a religious divorce so they can’t remarry.

To quote a couple of contemporary cases that at least made headlines  outside Israel, we have the 8-year old girl spat on as she went to school for being ‘inappropriately dressed’, and the four girls made to sit at the back of the bus, even though such blatant discrimination is against the law.

Where Islam stands out is that it is mired in the 9^th Century. The Torah still sanctions the stoning of women caught in adultery, but this has not been exercised for a while. Not so in Islam.

So what is more likely? That women are beaten out of religious duty? Or out of sexual gratification dressed up as such?

 

 

 

Fornication, deference & Leveson....

JFK was a tupping ram, a satyr with persistent priapism, who kept an entire stable of totty ranging from a Scandinavian Airlines blonde beauty to Marilyn Monroe. He was particularly partial to the ménage a trois. He made Clinton look like a chaste Boy Scout.

 

LBJ was a nasty, drunken, bullying, sex-obsessed slob, who would conduct press briefings sitting on the toilet and who was known to urinate in full public view. Despite his civil rights legislation, he was an unmitigated racist who invariably referred to ‘niggers’.

 

Carter was the most deeply unpleasant of all, who treated his staff with contempt and abuse; a two-faced hypocrite who declared the White House ‘dry’ when it was anything but, and who would carry an empty suitcase to show that he was just an ordinary Joe  who toted his own luggage. He micromanaged the White House to such an extent that he even decreed the cleaning of the carpets. They were left filthy to show how frugal he was.

 

Nixon was weird. He never smiled except to the cameras and never, ever addressed a single word to Pat, who was an alcoholic, frequently insensibly drunk.

 

Ronnie was the perfect gentleman, adored by his staff. The wife was a grade-A bitch.

 

In their position their behaviour would have been known to hundreds, if not thousands. But the voting public had no clue as to the real character of those seeking their votes.

 

The reason? A deferential media. In the US it tends to continue to be so, if to a lesser extent. As a political journalist you have to watch your ps & qs otherwise you might lose your accreditation, in which case you are  toast.

 

The Gary Hart expose blew the lid off. When Ronnie was told he just smiles and said ‘Boys will be boys …….. but boys won’t be President!’ Suddenly the fox was in the hen-house and led to the feeding frenzy over Petraeus.

 

Until the 1960s, things were not much different in the UK. Along came the late, much-lamented Robin Day. Instead of ‘How did you enjoy your foreign trip, Prime Minister?’ the usual  cringing approach to the Masters of the Universe, Day, a barrister, would subject his quarry to merciless cross-examination.

 

And the lid came off big-time with the Profumo affair.

 

Then emerged David Frost (still doing his stuff on Aljazeera), TW3, Peter Cook’s hilarious destruction of MacMillan when Supermac was unwise enough to go to see ‘Beyond  the Fringe’, ‘The Dishonourable Member’, ‘Spitting Image’, and all the wonderful political satire that has alas disappeared as politics has gone beyond satire.

 

So what has this to do with Leveson?.

 

His proposals would take us right back to the to the 50s, back to the hypocrisy, the concealment of scandals and of unacceptable conduct by our rulers, all the cheating and crookery, adultery, in-house fornication, and all the rest of the  outrages exposed by free media .

 

Is that what Miliband and Clegg want? Because it’s what they will get!

 

 

 

Obama, Rice & race..........

The racial politics involved in the Susan Rice affair further illustrates the extent to which Obama is willing to go to populate Washington with minorities.

 

 Let's begin by acknowledging that Rice is no slouch. She has impeccable academic and career credentials and is void of any naughtiness issues relating to her family life and personal comportment. Her sin was twofold.

 

First, as a civil servant, she politicized the Benghazi killings by strictly following the party line that they were motivated by an anti-Muslim film. In the process, she also committed the sin of exposing herself as a loyal Obama follower willing to set aside any uncertainties or information to the contrary in favor of the party line.

 

In short, she cannot think for herself and by extension cannot tell truth to power. She became a lackey and, by recent accounts, will pay for it by not being put forward as Hillary Clinton's replacement as Secretary of State.

 

As for Hillary, she is clearly walking the party line tightrope. During her final days in office, she does not want to slip up and risk leaving the State Department with some obvious blots on her copybook. Once she arrived in Israel to assist in brokering the Gaza cease fire, she wisely backed off and gave full credit to Mohamed Morsi.

 

Hers was a smooth move that unfortunately for her was a bit overdone. She so lionized Morsi that he turned around and declared himself the new Pharoah. In the process he converted what many world leaders viewed as a bastion of Middle Eastern democracy into a bad joke.

 

It is not fair to blame Hillary for Morsi's turnaround, but it is doubtful that she saw it coming. Just now, Hillary is focused 100% on her exit strategy and laying the foundation for the prospect of a presidential race candidate in 2016.

 

Until the campaign begins, she will need some rest, a hairdresser and a clothing designer with a touch of class.

 

 

 

Obama opening the racial divide?

A politico-demographic insight from a recent conversation is worth developing. It has to do with Obama's recent win and the configuration of voters that helped make that happen.

 

It is first useful to recall voting patterns in many larger American cities. Detroit is a good example.It has a large African-American population along with substantial Hispanic representation and a solid bloc of white liberals. These three entities were able to merge into a sufficiently strong voting bloc to successfully elect a black mayor. Moreover, this pattern is being duplicated all over America although at times the elected mayor turns out to be a white liberal as in the case of Chicago or an Hispanic as in the case of San Antonio. 

 

This model also pertains to the last presidential election. It suggests that the USA will continue to be led by a coalition of minorities over the years ahead. All that is required to achieve this is for key states which by definition have large African-American and/or Hispanic minorities, to continue their infatuation with the Democratic Party. As long as we have the Electoral College, minority cum liberal votes can be parleyed into strategic voting blocs that guarantee success. 

 

This formula for success is not as easy to maintain as it sounds. First and foremost, it costs a lot of money to plan and energize voter registration and voter turn-out campaigns. It also assumes that the Republican Party will remain impotent as a result of ideological feuds and a general unwillingness to identify and support a single candidate. One of the more devastating factors leading to Romney's failure to win was the exposure of his every weakness  and item of dirty laundry during the primary debates. Those debates gave the Democrats all the ammunition needed to topple Romney and then some.

 

Clearly, and the Republicans know this and the Democrats fear it, the Republican Party needs to systematically and genuinely reach out to ethnic minorities if it ever wants to access the bully pulpit again. If nothing else, Romney's hard line vision on immigration reform assured defeat. While we may not have known this at the time, we did know that his immigration policies were certain to lose Hispanic votes.

 

Attracting Afro-American votes is not easy for the Republican Party especially if the selected candidate is white and rich. Sadly, many black and white voters do not realize that the advancement of African-Americans in contemporary society will not be achieved by making them more dependent on government handouts. Surely a portion of the billions of campaign dollars in the Republican coffers could be spent on educating the public to this simple fact.

 

One disturbing side effect of the last and future campaigns is the commanding role played by racial politics. Obama was meant to mollify African American anger and to demonstrate as a role model that the American dream was open to all races. As soon as he was elected, Obama began to develop the administrative infrastructure whereby minorities could short-cut their way to higher incomes and status.  

 

This led to a reaction among conservatives in which they noted in a series of talking points that 'equal opportunity did not ensure equal results'. The promoters of this reminder wanted to make it clear that they would support equal opportunities measures but they would not do so at the expense of incompetent employees or office holders.